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Senate vote on guns was profoundly undemocratic (Other Views)

By By Daily Freeman Editorial Board

Updated:
04/20/2013 01:44:03 PM EDT

President Barack Obama stands at the podium at left as Mark Barden, the father of Newtown shooting victim Daniel is embraced by Vice President Joe Biden during a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, April 17, 2013, in Washington, about measures to reduce gun violence. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (Carolyn Kaster)

The U.S. Senate this week rejected what could be described as a tepid response to the shootings deaths of 20 elementary school children and six educators at Newtown, Conn.

The measure would have closed huge loopholes in the national background check system.

The system provides the means to refuse to sell firearms to persons legally prohibited from owning weapons and background checks have stopped about 130,000 weapons purchases annually since implementation in 1997.

But the law irrationally has left the loopholes — primarily, gun shows, Internet sales and private sales — through which weapons flow into the hands of persons legally prohibited from holding a weapon.

The bill defeated this week would have closed the gun show and Internet loopholes, which would have been a positive step.

But the proposed law still would have exempted private sales, and that's what we mean by a tepid response. That treated a negligible inconvenience posed to a private seller as more important than preventing the transfer of a firearm to someone formally judged by a court to be potentially dangerous to others.

It's really hard to fathom.

Not only are instant background checks constitutional, but polling on the question showed a remarkable national consensus of support.

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A Washington Post/ABC poll conducted April 11-14 showed 86 percent of Americans support background checks at gun shows and for online purchases.

In 2013, you can't get 86 percent of Americans to agree that apple pie is a good thing

Moreover, no matter how the numbers were sliced and diced — by region, by age, by gender, by income, by education, by political ideology or party affiliation, by race or religion — the support held, according to the poll.

For the record, the greatest opposition to expanded background checks came from white evangelical Protestants. Among those ranks, 20 percent opposed the measure, but 79 percent supported.

The big bugaboo among the most fervent gun rights advocates is that universal background checks somehow will create a registry that will lead to government confiscation of weapons. That's the fear that opponents leveraged into defeat of the measure.

It is completely phony, a deliberate lie. The government does not create or keep a registry of gun owners. Licensed dealers only keep paperwork, which by federal law cannot be converted by the government into a database.

It's hard not to draw the conclusion from the Senate defeat that American democracy can be profoundly undemocratic, which is simply to say, there are special interest forces more powerful than even the overwhelming will of the people to implement constitutional change.

A very small proportion of the electorate that cares passionately about an issue can work the levers of power to overwhelm a position perhaps less passionately held by close to 90 percent of the people.

This is unlikely to change unless and until those who support commonsense gun-control measures become as well-organized and fervent as those who are opposed.